Festival Maker · Lesson 2
Lesson 2: Learning to Play the Game
Students enter the world of Symphonia to learn how to play Festival Maker, working through one full round in the Chorus of Commons region — graphing tempo and loudness, matching and activating creatures, and recording their first playlist on the website.
Overview
Students enter the world of Symphonia to explore how tempo and loudness affect creatures. They collect and analyze data through gameplay and begin building playlists, while gathering loot that will later be used to design their festival. The Symphonia gameplay extends over multiple days. Students should be split into their small groups at the start of class, given the game materials, and given access to Challenges and Loot somewhere in the classroom. In addition to game materials, each group needs one laptop and a pair of headphones to share.
Student Objectives
I can…
- ✓ I can use tempo and loudness data to activate creatures.
- ✓ I can practice gameplay steps.
- ✓ I can reflect on how data informs decisions.
- ✓ I can use graph evidence to match songs and creatures.
- ✓ I can collect loot for future festival design.
At a Glance
Total: about 45 minutes| Section | Time | Slides | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome & Grounding, Connector | 4 min | 4–6 | Introduce Day 2 and share that today students will actually learn how to play the game. Play music as students enter and invite them to notice how it makes them feel and connect to last class. Then have each student choose a creature image that matches how they feel and share with a partner, small group, or reflect silently. |
| Review Visual Agenda & Agreements | 2 min | 7–8 | Review "Today's Adventure" and give students an overview of the day's activities. Review the classroom agreements, reinforcing expectations for teamwork and participation. |
| Game Materials & Set Up | 4 min | 10–12 | Give students a high-level overview of the game. Re-introduce and name the materials — song sheets, creature cards, challenge cards, and graphing mat (most were explored in Lesson 1's station rotation). Explain the win condition (checking the colored boxes on the Graphing Mat to activate creatures) and the three rotating team roles — Summoner (two hands), Data DJ (open laptop), and Tracker (simple graph). |
| How to Play Festival Maker | 32 min | 13–37 | Walk the whole class through one full round in the Chorus of Commons, working in teams. Assign roles and move to the first region (Step 1), pick a song sheet (Step 2), graph the five songs' tempo and loudness (Step 3), then match and activate creatures with the translucent range strips, marking activated songs red on the Graphing Mat (Step 4). Finally, use dataadventures.org/festival/app to enter tempo and loudness, reveal the musical match, add each creature to the playlist, name it with a short code, and "Inscribe to Archives" (Step 5). Match Lyribel–Masterpiece, Hopsnap–Recuerdame, Rivergleam–Mamari, and Driftwing–Portrait of Mom. Have teams write their code somewhere safe — and if anyone loses it, you can look up any saved playlist by name at dataadventures.org/teachers/playlists. |
| Reflection & Closing Ritual | 3 min | 38 | Clean up for gameplay tomorrow. Optional: guide students through a brief "Creature Reset" calming/reset routine. |
Materials & Prep
- No additional pages to print for this lesson.
Gather
- Creature CardsOrganize by group into blue, red, and yellow decks.
- Song SheetsOrganize by region.
- Graphing Mat
- Translucent Range Windows
- Team Role Cards
- Dry- or wet-erase markers
- Projector
- Optional supportsNoise-reducing headphones, pause cards, sentence frames, multilingual vocabulary cards, visual reference posters, and a sensory guide.
Digital
- Facilitation Slide Deck — Day 2
- Festival Maker app — dataadventures.org/festival/appEach group needs one computer with sound, headphones, and internet access for recording playlists.
- Teacher tool — look up saved playlistsTeacher-facing (don't share with students). If a student forgets their playlist name/code, search saved playlists here.
Before You Teach
- ☐Set up activity materials for each group — creature cards (blue, red, yellow), song sheets by region, team roles, graphing mat, markers, and headphones.
- ☐Cue music for arrival.
- ☐Display Slide 3.
Open slide deck to project launches the fullscreen slideshow in a new tab. Open with speaker notes opens the deck in Google Slides with the speaker-notes pane below each slide — read these to prep, or open presenter view while projecting. The preview above is just a quick look.